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Digital Initiatives and DigitalLibrary ApplicationsMary C. Schlembach & William H. MischoPublished online: 22 Sep 2008.

To cite this article: Mary C. Schlembach & William H. Mischo (2007) Digital Initiativesand Digital Library Applications, Science & Technology Libraries, 26:3-4, 1-5, DOI:10.1300/J122v26n03_01

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J122v26n03_01

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FROM THE EDITOR . . .

Digital Initiativesand Digital Library Applications:

The New Frontier

You cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.

–Albert Einstein

The inexorable and all-pervasive transition in libraries from printmaterials to electronic information resources has affected all aspects oflibrarianship. E-resources permeate all access and bibliographic controlactivities. It has broken down real or perceived divisions among publicservices, technical services, and collection-development departmentsand activities. The rate of change has been dramatic. While there is noeasy way to measure this rate of change, most people in the field wouldanecdotally claim that over the last three to five years the profession hasundergone a paradigm shift. As an obvious example, in 1994, at the be-

Science & Technology Libraries, Vol. 26(3/4) 2006Available online at http://stl.haworthpress.com

© 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1300/J122v26n03_01 1

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ginning of the Digital Library Initiative I (DLI-I) projects, there werethree electronic journals. Today, the TDNet Publication Access Man-agement Service (PAM) system supplies over 40,000 unique e-journaltitles and over 300,000 online instances to its subscribers. Analogous tothe oft-quoted observation that the surgeon from the 19th century visit-ing an operating arena today would be unable to recognize anything inthe modern environment except for the patient, we can say that the ref-erence librarian of 1965, if transported into today’s modern academiclibrary, would recognize only the patron (and extension to the Medlarsdatabase).

Academic libraries and their users live in a greatly distributed infor-mation environment. This local academic-information environment ismade up of a myriad of important distributed and discrete informationresources. Among the distributed information silos made available bylibraries are: Publisher and professional society repositories of full-textjournal articles and e-books; publisher online-reference digital libraries;Abstracting and Indexing (A & I) Services latched to local OpenURLlink resolvers; institutional repositories; local, regional, and nationalonline catalogs; Open Archive Initiative (OAI) service providers; open-access journals; custom A-to-Z list electronic resource managementsystems; metasearch servers; large-scale and local digitization projectsystems; and local digital asset management systems. These resourcesare all “competing” for student and faculty mind-share with campuspersonalized information portals, course management systems, broad-based and vertical Web search engines, disciplinary and professionalsociety repositories, and social networking mechanisms such as instantmessaging, blogs, and RSS.

Taken in aggregate, these distributed services and resources are notintegrated or interoperable “out-of-the-box.” The grand challenge for li-braries is how to better unify this heterogeneous information envi-ronment and project themselves into user’s research and learning experi-ences. Librarians need to push forward on the development of integra-tion and navigation tools and mechanisms in cooperation with vendors,publishers, and campus information technology units. Figure 1 illus-trates a portal access approach to the distributed information environ-ment.

Lorcan Dempsey identifies two overarching themes for digital-librarydevelopment work: (1) The development of services which mediate ac-cess between a user and distributed library resources; and (2) A focus onmanagement of large-scale repositories and digital-content stores(Dempsey, 2005). These themes nicely illustrate the importance of the in-

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tegration of access, bibliographic control, and digital-library develop-ment. The articles contained in this issue address the changinginformation environment and the efforts of librarians to more aggres-sively integrate electronic information resources into the research and in-structional process.

The first three articles in this issue examine access and management is-sues connected with publisher full-text systems. Randy Wallace reportson a usage study of the Safari Tech Books Online e-books fromProQuest. The Safari computer-related titles can be integrated into e-re-serve and course-management systems. The article by Jay Bhatt and hispartners reports on a multilibrary partnership with the Knovel Corpora-tion, marketer of electronicscience and engineering handbook titles.There are several competing on-line handbook publishers and vendorsand this is considered an undeveloped service area. The article by Mischoet al. reviews electronic journal usage, management, and access issues.Access to e-journals has become a mission-critical application in aca-

From the Editor . . . 3

FIGURE 1. A Portal Access Approach to the Distributed Information Environ-ment

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demic libraries. E-journals have become an indispensable element ofacademic research and instruction.

Federal grants have supported a number of digital library develop-ment efforts. Either directly or indirectly, federal grants have contrib-uted to national information technology standards and best practices.The National Science Digital Library (NSDL), funded under the aegisof the National Science Foundation, has developed a digital librarycommunity of researchers and developers. The article by Saylor andMinton-Morris provides an overview of the NSDL Core Integration ac-tivities, including a description of several new system features. Chrza-stowski and Scheeline describe the Analytical Sciences Digital Library(ADSL), one of the projects funded under the NSDL program. TheADSL represents an open-access effort in the chemistry community.

One of the key technologies in the Open Access movement is the OpenArchives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI- PMH).Hamb et al. provide a general overview of the protocol and describe acustom vertical OAI-based search service covering engineering, physics,and computer science disciplines. A large-scale OAI cooperative applica-tion involving the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) librariesis described by Foulonneau et al. The CIC system focuses on improveddiscovery via metadata normalization and enhancement–an important is-sue when processing heterogenous collections.

The article by David Stern describes the Yale Leaf Morphologydigitization project. These local and mass digitization efforts will playan ever-increasing role in library and vendor services.

Finally, the influence of digital library development efforts on dis-tance learning is examined by Sapp and Van Epps. Remote and distanceeducation programs will play an important role in the future of highereducation.

Not all current digital library development work is represented in thisissue. In particular, the area of institutional repositories (IRs), has gaineda great deal of traction in the last year. However, the relationship betweendiscipline or subject repositories and institutional repositories is stillunclear and IRs are plagued by sluggish uptake by research faculty. Insti-tutional repositories are the focus of emphasis within the Library ofCongress-sponsored National Digital Information Infrastructure andPreservation (NDIIPP) program, and also within a number of fundedprojects through the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).

In summary, a number of technologies have been brought to bear onthe problem connected with the unification of the distributed informa-tion environment described above. Several of the articles in this issue

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describe federated or aggregated searching approaches using OAI har-vesting of distributed resources and centralized database structures.This contrasts with metasearch or broadcast-search techniques that pro-vide remote search and results integration. These are complementarymethodologies and search portals will need to utilize hybrid lines ofattack to address enhanced user access.

Mary C. SchlembachWilliam H. Mischo

REFERENCE

Dempsey, Lorcan. 2006. The (Digital) Library Environment: Ten Years After. Ariadne.Issue 46, January. Available at www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue46/dempsey/. (Accessed2/17/2006.)

From the Editor . . . 5

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